3 Medical Ethics and Law Research Center School of Nursing & Midwifery, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

4 Nursing Care Research Center, Department of Critical Care Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Background:

Considering that many nursing actions affect other people’s health and life, sensitivity to ethics in nursing practice is highly important to ethical leaders as a role model.

Objective:

The study aims to explore ethical sensitivity in ethical nursing leaders in Iran.

Method:

This was a qualitative study based on the conventional content analysis in 2015. Data were collected using deep and semi-structured interviews with 20 Iranian nurses. The participants were chosen using purposive sampling. Data were analyzed using conventional content analysis. In order to increase the accuracy and integrity of the data, Lincoln and Guba's criteria were considered.

Results:

Fourteen sub-categories and five main categories emerged. Main categories consisted of sensitivity to care, sensitivity to errors, sensitivity to communication, sensitivity in decision making and sensitivity to ethical practice.

Conclusion:

Ethical sensitivity appears to be a valuable attribute for ethical nurse leaders, having an important effect on various aspects of professional practice and help the development of ethics in nursing practice.

Unique Statistics:

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.

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